deep breaths

Today was one of those 'drowning-in-advance' sort of days.

They always say that when you're drowning you see your whole life pass before you. Though quite how they actually know that, I'm not entirely sure.

There are days, though, when you wake up and you suddenly see, not the past, but the future and what's to be done, and it all runs through your mind in a sudden flash.

It was that sort of waking I woke to this morning.

I figured I should just take a long, deep breath because the next three weeks look like seeing me up to my eyes and deeper in terms of all that there is to do!

There's a film I watched a long, long time ago, called 'The Poseidon Adventure'.

This was the original version, so I mean it was a very long time ago indeed (and I recall as a young, growing lad having something of a crush on the girl in the film who wore the red shorts. I think the actress was Pamela something or other, but I don't remember what. Maybe someone out there knows who I mean...?)

I just remember the bit in the film where in order to make it out they have to swim underwater for what seems like half a whole eternity to get to another part of the upturned boat and the chance of a route to safety.

It feels a bit like that sort of holding your breath.

Or maybe the sort of deep and careful breathing that a pregnant woman does when labour really starts.

Maybe. Not having been in the position I wouldn't really know.

But something like that. A sense that if I get the breathing right I'll make it through to the other side and something really wonderful awaits me there.

Like being part of an amazing rescue. Or giving birth to something new.

The day was full of a load of preparation. And at night I was out for some Bible study again.

There's a small, but slowly growing group of folk I meet with now to study the Bible together. And to share a bit and pray for one another too.

Well tonight it both was and it wasn't Bible study.

It was, because we were looking at all sorts of bits of the Bible and what it was that Jesus taught and what that meant for us.

And yet it wasn't, because we didn't even touch on the bit of the Bible we'd planned to be looking at!

It was really pretty exciting!

And it ended with us praying for some folk who are having struggles. One, an older man who's had(and has) an awful lot of pain which the doctors simply cannot address at all.

We figured we should pray for him that God would simply do himself what the doctors had been unable to do.

Which is pretty much what Jesus did. Healing people whom the doctors had not been able to help.

We're meant to follow him. Which means thinking like him.

One of the huge big problems that we have is that we've got our whole perspective quite the wrong way round.

We don't expect miracles.

That's our starting point. It's not that we don't believe in miracles. Because at least in theory we do. being good little Christians and all of that.

We just don't expect them.

And because we don;t expect them, we don't ask for them.

And because we don;t ask for them ... well, we don;t see them.

Which simply proves our starting point was right! And we end up expecting them even less.

A rather vicious circle.

When Jesus all along is saying to us to start the other way around. In fact the whole Bible is saying that all the way through. Start from a different perspective.

God is a great big God.

Expect miracles.

Then learn to ask for them.

And when you ask for them you'll start seeing them.

And once you start seeing them you'll expect them more and more.

See what I mean about our being entirely the wrong way round in the way our thinking goes.

Well, we talked about that quite a lot. And about how we might learn to think creatively and let folk see through what we do that Jesus is for real.

By doing the sort of things that he would do.

It was the sort of evening when by its end you kind of felt you might have maybe started to change the whole world!

So who knows what'll have happened by the end of the next three weeks!